18 
VOICES OF NATURE 
in the brilliant scintillation with which it en¬ 
kindles our nisdits. 
O 
An appeal which becomes frightful from the 
number of those who make it. What is the little 
tribe of Birds, or that of Quadrupeds, compared 
with them ? All the animal species, all the various 
forms of life, brought face to face with this one 
family, disappear, and are as nothing. Put the world 
on one side, and on the other the Insect World; the 
latter has the advantage. 
Our collections contain about one hundred thou¬ 
sand species. But taking into consideration that 
every plant at the least nourishes three, we obtain 
the result, according to the number of known plants, 
of three hundred and sixty thousand species of in¬ 
sects ! And each, be it remembered, of prodigious 
fecundity. 
Now call to mind that every creature nourishes 
other creatures on its surface, in the thickness of its 
solids, in its fluids, and in its blood; that each insect 
is a little world inhabited by insects; and that these 
again have parasites of their own. 
Is this all ? No; in the masses men have sup¬ 
posed to be mineral or inorganic, animals are now 
revealed to us of which it would take a thousand 
millions to form one inch in thickness,—the which do 
not the less present us with a rough sketch or outline 
of the Insect, and have a right to be spoken of as 
insects commenced. And what are the numbers of these ? A single 
species accumulates the Apennines out of its debris, and with its atoms 
